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Dying Under a Hard Sky (A Good Friday Reflection)

"I only got half my intestines." Renegade practically shouts while lifting his shirt revealing a snake-sized scar crawling up & over his gargantuan belly toward his chest. "Shot up in Nam. I was a machine gunner. When I eat I need to be close to a bathroom." He laughs loudly but suddenly stops & says, "That ain't funny." And then he smiles a wide toothless grin.

Renegade’s a big man with a big grey-white beard & a bigger belly tucked into a red flannel shirt. He has a big voice & in many ways he reminds me of the bear from the animated Jungle Book movie, Baloo, jolly & jovial most of the time but strong enough to protect himself from an onslaught of angry men.

Once in December while he was throwing a sign for money in downtown Monterey a little boy ran up to him and jumped in his lap. Without missing a beat Renegade told the earnest youngster, "Well son you know I'm off duty right now but I'll make an exception - but just this once. Now listen - if you do good in school & I'm tellin' you you gotta do your best. And you obey your ma & pop you'll get what's coming for Christmas - now tell me what it is you want." And the boy proceeded to tell Renegade all his Christmas wishes while a startled father relaxed at the incarnation of Santa right before his eyes.

For a few Sundays at our little 'inconsequential' homeless church on the beach Renegade hovers around sitting one picnic table away from where we read Scripture & pray for one another. He pretends not to listen. But I see him lean closer at times straining to hear what's being discussed while he sips a can of beer wrapped up in a brown paper bag. I think in some ways he believes he’s paying due respect by not 'attending' church while drinking.

"Me and God are straight. I ain't saying I'm perfect - I like my beer & I like to smoke my weed. He knows where I stand. And when I get up there,” he says pointing to the sky, “ain't no secrets gonna be between Him & me. Me & Him have a deal." Renegade repeats that refrain every time I see him. It seems to be a kind of testament to his honesty but one that betrays a hurricane of destruction churning & slashing the outer banks of his spirit.

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Voices that Change Us

You may or may not know that Saint Patrick was not an Irishman. In fact, he was a Brit (a Romano-Briton to be precise) & as a teenager he was captured by the Irish & enslaved. After six some odd years of slavery the young Patrick heard a voice telling him to walk to a port 200 miles away where he would discover a ship that would lead him home. Indeed, Patrick obeyed the instruction, discovered the ship, eventually returned to his freedom, his homeland, & his eventual calling into the ministry of the church. Years later - as legend has it - Patrick experienced a vision of a man carrying a number of letters & inscribed on the letter handed to him were the words, "the voice of the Irish." And while Patrick read the letter he imagined he heard a chorus of voices crying out to him, "We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk among us." So Patrick went to the land of his former captors & the rest so to speak is history - with a good bit of Irish legend thrown in.

Stop Burning People & Start Loving the Unlovely

"We operate with the assumption that giving people new ideas changes people.  It doesn’t.  Believing ideas is, in fact, a way of not having to change in any significant way, especially if you can argue about them.  Ideas become defenses.

 

you have the right words, you are considered an orthodox and law-abiding Christian.  We burned people at the stake for not having the right words, but never to my knowledge for failing to love or forgive, or to care for the poor.  Religion has had a love affair with words and correct ideas, whereas Jesus loved people, who are always imperfect.

You do not have to substantially change to think some new ideas.  You always have to change to love and forgive ordinary people.  We love any religion that asks us to change other people.  We avoid any religion that keeps telling us to change."

-Richard Rohr (adapted from How Men Change: A Thin Time)

 

Listening as Spiritual Hospitality - Henri Nouwen

To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements, or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, to welcome, to accept.

Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings. The beauty of listening is that, those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking their words more seriously and discovering their own true selves. Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you.

Radical Hospitality Changes Everything . . .

"Hospitality is the practice that keeps the church from becoming a club, a members-only society.  Through hospitality, historian Rowan Greer claims, 'an inclusive ideal of community life is affirmed, and we may suppose that implementing this ideal was no easier in the ancient world than in ours.'  In greeting, meeting, eating, and caring, the church acted as a community with its arms open, attracting inquirers through a practical demonstration of God's love. 'Observe, the hospitality here spoken of,' preached John Chrysostom, 'is not merely a friendly reception, but one given with zeal and alacrity, with readiness, as going about it as if one were receiving Christ himself.'  From what historians can gather, hospitality-not martyrdom - served a the main motivator for conversions.